Step-by-step instructions: How the GOP could ‘Dump Trump’ in Cleveland

Do we think that the Republican Party will ditch presumptive nominee Donald Trump at its convention in July and select someone else to replace him — a notion that seems to be catching on among conservatives and commentators in the wake of Trump’s controversial remarks about the Mexican-American judge overseeing his Trump university suit?

No, we do not.

And yet, if there were ever an election weird and wild enough to make such a switcheroo possible — just barely — 2016 would be it.

Cleveland is a long way away. A lot can happen between now and then.

So what would have to happen to make “Dump Trump” a reality?

To give our fellow convention fanatics something to fantasize about for the next 40 days, Unconventional has assembled a step-by-step instruction manual for dumping Trump. If any of these steps are skipped, the whole chain reaction fizzles out. But if every one of them is completed, there is still a chance — a very, very slim chance — that Donald Trump won’t be competing against Hillary Clinton in fall.

Step One: Trump keeps saying offensive stuff

Trump has said plenty of objectionable things since launching his campaign last summer: the Mexicans-are-rapists thing, the John-McCain-isn’t-a-war-hero thing, the Muslims-should-be-barred-from-entering-the-U.S. thing, and so on.

But the Judge Curiel-can’t-do-his-job-because-he’s-of-Mexican descent thing is the first toxic thing that Trump has said since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee. The content may be similar, but the context is very different. Before, during the primaries, Republican leaders could brush off Trump’s remarks. He’s not my candidate, they could say. Maybe the voters will still reject him. And if not, he’ll probably grow up in time for the general.

Back then, Trump didn’t represent the GOP. Now he does. So now whenever Trump says something offensive, other Republicans have to choose: Do I defend this? Or do I denounce it? Hiding isn’t an option anymore.

As we’ve seen over the last week, the risk of guilt by association has dramatically lowered the GOP’s tolerance for Trump’s most distasteful remarks.

“ ‘Bigot, bigot, bigot. Racist. Racist Racist,’ ” said influential conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday, recapping the morning’s headlines. “The Republican National Committee needs to step in and step up, and go see Donald Trump and tell him to get out of the race.”

View photos

Dump Trump: A protester holds an effigy of Donald Trump at an immigrant rights May Day march in Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

More

Hewitt’s alarmism aside, Trump can probably recover from a single Curiel-style controversy and regain Republican support. But if the sort of pattern he established as one of 17 primary candidates continues now that he’s the presumptive nominee — if this sort of incident happens again and again — more and more Republicans will decide that the only way they can salvage their own reputations is by distancing themselves from the guy at the top of the ticket.

Step Two: Trump’s poll numbers plummet

Right now, Trump is trailing Clinton by only 3.8 percentage points, on average, in the general-election polls. That’s reasonable. To be expected. He’s still “well within striking distance,” as they say.

But what happens if Trump’s numbers go into a free fall and Clinton starts to pull away? What if she crosses the 50-percent threshold and he plunges into the 30s? What if the gap between them widens — to five points, 10 points, 15 points?

This is key. The major problem with dumping Trump is political. It looks like GOP elites are conspiring to deny the will of GOP voters — the most galling offense imaginable in a year that’s been all about the voters denying the will of the elites.

But Trump’s plummeting poll numbers would provide objective evidence that actual voters agree with party leaders that he’s gone too far. The GOP would start to fear a down-ballot disaster. More Republicans would jump ship. Combined with a series of Curiel-like controversies, a sickening slide in Trump’s public-opinion stats might a establish a new anti-Trump argument that doesn’t ask rank-and-file Republicans to reject the nominee just because establishment types like Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio are doing it: Trump had his chance. Now he’s tanking — and he’s taking the party with him.

Step Three: Someone else steps up

Mitt Romney refused. Ben Sasse begged off. James Mattis said no sir. Even David French — a bald, bearded conservative lawyer that no one had ever heard of — decided against it.

You can’t fault the #NeverTrump movement for lack of effort. But so far, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and his anti-Donald cronies have been unable to convince anybody to take on Trump.

For the whole “Dump Trump” scheme to work, this would have to change.

As Curly Haugland, a member of the convention Rules Committee from North Dakota, recently told the New York Times, “In order to have a contested convention, we need to have contestants.”

Some Republican politicians are starting to signal their interest in a convention challenge. As Yahoo Senior Political Correspondent Jon Ward reported earlier this week, conservatives are increasingly mentioning Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as a “possible replacement.” RedState reported Wednesday that there are “rumors” that Walker is “open” to such an outcome. One of Ward’s sources said that Walker, who mounted a brief bid for the 2016 GOP nomination, has told those working to find an alternative that he would be willing to step up at the convention if Trump continues to implode.

View photos

Sen. Ted Cruz, who comes to mind as a possible substitute nominee, is keeping his options open. (Photo: Michael Conroy/AP)

More

The likeliest substitute, however, would be someone who can already claim considerable support among the convention delegates. Ted Cruz comes to mind. Right now, he has 559 delegates to Trump’s 1,542. But remember: Many of the delegates now pledged to Trump were loyal to Cruz (or some other candidate) first.

For his part, Cruz has kept his options open, refusing to endorse Trump and suggesting that if sees “a viable path to victory” in the future, he “will certainly respond accordingly.”

“I am looking and listening and watching the candidates,” Cruz told CNN earlier this week. “I’m doing the same thing millions of voters are doing and … time will tell.”

Step Four: Republicans rewrite the rules.

Now for the fun part.

Everybody thinks that 1,542 convention delegates are bound to vote for Trump on at least the first ballot. But that isn’t exactly true. The reality is that every convention passes its own rules, and with the exception of 1976, no GOP convention has ever voted to bind its delegates. They’re technically free to vote for whomever they want: Trump, Cruz, Walker, Mickey Mouse. If you’re curious, we’ve already explained this issue at length.

The problem is that various state rules and laws purport to bind the delegates — and the delegates will be loath to defy the directives of the 56 states and territories that sent them to Cleveland.

Fortunately for the Dump Trump dreamers, they don’t have to. All the delegates have to do is revise convention Rules 40(d) and (e) — the rules that say how many of their votes are required to win the nomination.

Currently, a simple majority will cut it: 50 percent plus one. But the convention could lift that threshold to 60 percent for the first ballot. Or 66.6 percent, which is where the Democratic Party set its bar for more than a hundred years, from 1832 to 1936. In that case, the delegates wouldn’t have to violate the state rules designed to bind them for a certain number of ballots — but Trump would no longer be assured the nomination.

Republicans aren’t desperate enough to do this yet. But imagine if they already had steps one, two and three under their belt. By then, the Rules Committee, the delegates and even many Trump supporters would likely be looking for a way out. Rewriting the rules would be their last chance.